The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius - College of Stoic Philosophers

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANTONINUS 55
call death. If we call death an evil, then all
change is
an evil.
Living beings also suffer pain, and man suffers
most of all, for he suffers both in and by his body and
by his intelligent part. Men suffer also from one another,
and perhaps the largest part of human suffering comes to
man from those whom he calls his brothers. Antoninus
says (vm, 55),
to the universe ;
Generally, wiclfedness does no harm at all
and particularly, the wickedness [of one
man] does no harm to another. It is only harmful to
him who has it in his power to be released from it as soon
as he shall choose. The first part of this is perfectly
consistent with the doctrine that the whole can sustain
no evil or harm. The second part must be explained by
the Stoic principle that there is no evil in anything which
is not in our power. What wrong we suffer from another
is his evil, not ours. But this is an admission that there
is evil in a sort, for he who does wrong does evil, and if
others can endure the wrong,
still there is evil in the
WTong-doer. Antoninus (xi, 18) gives many excellent
precepts with respect to wrongs and injuries, and his
precepts are practical. He teaches us to bear what we
cannot avoid, and his lessons may be just as useful to
him who denies the being and the government of God as
to him who believes in both. There is no direct answer
in Antoninus to the objections which may be made to the
existence and providence of God because of the moral
disorder and suffering which are in the world, except this
answer which he makes in reply to the supposition that
even the best men may be extinguished by death. He
says if it is so, we may be sure that if it ought to have
been otherwise, the gods would have ordered it otherwise
(xn, 5). His conviction of the wisdom wluch we may
observe in the government of the world is too strong to be
disturbed by any apparent irregularities in the order of
things. That these disorders exist is a fact, and those
who would conclude from them against the being and